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b'It. Has. Been. A. Year. We\\u2019ve felt it; you\\u2019ve felt it. Sometimes, it\\u2019s comforting to consider how universal that overwhelming sense of\\xa0blah\\xa0is. Other days, woof, it can be tough to see the light. That\\u2019s the subject of today\\u2019s episode, brought to you by our producer Megan Lubin.\\n\\nWhen Megan hit an especially low point earlier this year, she noticed something in the music she was listening to: \\xdcber-popular artists making explicit references to the state of their mental health and the things they do to cope with it. It made her want to know more about the impact of those lyrics, so she dug around and found an academic who studies that very thing: Alex Kresovich, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of North Carolina\\u2019s Hussman School of Journalism and Media who has authored a bunch of studies on mental health and popular music. In today\\u2019s episode, we walk through one of those studies with him and learn how influential lyrical content can be \\u2014 even when you\\u2019re not paying super-close attention. Alex\\u2019s research, and research like it, opens up the possibility that pop artists are an underestimated asset when it comes to mental-health messaging. \\u201cPeople like to point at pop music as a source of problems, not a source of solutions,\\u201d he says. Alex sees his job as guiding the scientific community toward new data that could change how we understand the value of pop-music lyrics \\u2014 \\u201claying the railroad ties,\\u201d as he puts it.\\n\\nIn the second half of today\\u2019s episode, we talk to an artist who has taken the concept of music as medicine to a whole new level. Over the course of her career, Esperanza Spalding has reimagined the music-making process \\u2014 transforming it from one designed to meet her label\\u2019s commercial needs to one designed to meet the mental-health needs of her immediate community. With her new album\\xa0Songwrights Apothecary Lab,\\xa0Spalding offers up a collection of songs for \\u201creleasing the heaviness of a seemingly endless blue state,\\u201d for \\u201csteadying the vast-spinning \\u2018potential hurt\\u2019 analysis triggered by the bliss of new romance,\\u201d and for \\u201cslowing down and remembering to make space/time for your elders.\\u201d Spalding made clear that this way of \\u201cmusicking\\u201d is nothing new:\\nIt\\u2019s like the oldest thing ever\\u2026.we\\u2019re playing with the origin of music. The origin of music being: a response to others in your community, in your surroundings. And the response is intuitive! When you hum for a baby or when you\\u2019re sitting with somebody who is grieving and you, you feel compelled to hum, or when you\\u2019re excited and go, \\u201cWow!\\u201d That\\u2019s music!\\n\\nSpalding\\u2019s view of music these days opened our eyes wide to the true healing power of individual songs and just how accessible music is when we need it.\\n\\n\\nSongs Discussed\\ngirl in red - Serotonin\\nBillie Eilish - Getting Older\\nJulia Michaels ft. Selena Gomez - Anxiety\\nJ. Cole ft. kiLL edward - FRIENDS\\nLil Nas X - VOID\\nKehlani - 24/7\\nKendrick Lamar - u\\nJuice WRLD - Lucid Dreams\\nPanic! At the Disco\\xa0- King of the Clouds\\nShawn Mendes - In My Blood\\nAriana Grande - breathin\\nLogic, Alessia Cara, Khalid - 1-800-273-8255\\nBillie Eilish ft. Khalid - lovely\\nLil Uzi Vert - XO Tour Llif3\\nEsperanza Spalding - Formwela 3\\nEsperanza Spalding - Formwela 6\\nEsperanza Spalding - Formwela 10\\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices'